An accomplished film music conductor with thousands of hours in front of orchestras in Hollywood and around the world, award winning film and television composer John Beal is as at home conducting movie scores on the concert stage as he is in the recording studio. He has conducted a wide and diverse variety of shows and film scores with many of the world’s greatest musicians in venues stretching from London to Tokyo, and throughout the United States, including several decades in Los Angeles with the Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Beal is the founding general manager and producer of the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra, shepherding it through its debut season, and is now its consulting television and concert producer.
Throughout his career Mr. Beal has collaborated with many diverse artists, such as Olivia Newton-John, Johnny Mathis, Gladys Knight, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, B.B. King, Phyllis Diller, Raquel Welch, Frankie Avalon, Captain & Tennille, Jim Nabors, Lou Rawls, Mitzi Gaynor, and the Ed Sullivan Armed Forces Tour. He also was involved in the creation of music for Disneyland’s Carousel of Progress and America sings, and as conductor for the Grand Opening of Walt Disney World. One of his earliest successes as a Hollywood conductor was for the Emmy award-winning special Swing Out Sweet Land.
John Beal’s music has been featured on the President of the United States of America’s AIR FORCE ONE. Mr. Beal composed the music for 35 theatrical features, television films and documentaries, 26 major network television series or specials, and was music director/music consultant for over 20 major network specials. Mr. Beal’s hit television shows include Chicago Story, Vega$, Good Time Girls, Eight Is Enough, Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley.
Early in John Beal’s film and television scoring career, Warner Bros.’ head of worldwide music, Gary LeMel, introduced Mr. Beal to Hollywood’s movie-advertising pioneer Andrew J. Kuehn, whose creative mastery revolutionized the motion picture trailer. John Beal was part of the ground-breaking creation of today’s contemporary motion picture trailer format and is recognized throughout the industry as the composer who defined its musical style and template. Their creative teaming on trailers continued for more than two decades.
Trusted by every major motion picture studio to compose original scores for marketing their films, John Beal’s trailer music has been heard by more moviegoers than that of many feature film composers. With over 2,000 major studio advertising projects, including forty of the top grossing films of all time, such as The Matrix, The Last Samurai, Titanic, Forrest Gump, Aladdin, Braveheart, The Mask of Zorro, Patriot Games, JFK, Star Wars, True Lies and many more, the success of movie campaigns to which John Beal has contributed original creative is literally measured in hundreds of billions of dollars.
Mr. Beal’s career also includes work as composer, conductor, music producer and creative consultant for over 35 national advertisers, including Intel, MCI, Microsoft, FlexJet, Dr. Pepper, Apple, Ben & Jerry’s and NASDAQ. Other clients include Arista, Buena Vista, Columbia/TriStar Pictures, Elektra/Asylum, Miramax Films, MGM, New Line Cinema, Fine Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures, Rastar Films, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox Movie Channel, Here Media, FX, Walt Disney Imagineering for Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida.
Mr. Beal’s industry honors include two Key Art awards, two Golden Trailer awards, two trailer awards from Hollywood.com, a Golden Score Award, International Film Music Critics Association Award, two Readers Choice awards, Moviescore Online award, and recognition for his contribution to two Emmy awards in Music Direction and Composition. A United States Marine Corps combat veteran, John Beal has been decorated for heroism, bravery, valor and gallantry.
Born in Santa Monica California and raised in La Cañada-Flintridge California, John Beal’s father was an aeronautical engineer who helped design the space simulator facilities at Jet Propulsion Laboratories and his paternal grandfather supervised the design and testing of the first televisions for RCA, as well as designing the multichannel sound system for Disney’s movie, FANTASIA.
John Beal’s first music studies at age six were on piano, at age eight he worked as a professional soloist in a boys choir, and switched to studying drums at age 9, studying with studio musician Stan Hollingworth. By the time Beal was fourteen, he was already teaching drums alongside studio greats Jim Keltner and Gary Foster. Expanding his craft, he studied mallet percussion with Composer William Kraft, Harry Partch studies with Danlee Mitchell, and mastered big band and session techniques with major recording studio musicians, including Frank Sinatra’s drummer, Irv Cottler, Bernie Mattinson and ethnomusicologist Craig Woodson. He was a professional jazz drummer and orchestral percussionist all through high school and college. Turning down an opportunity to travel with Don Ellis’ Hindustani Jazz Sextet, Mr. Beal studied composition and conducting at California State University San Diego and, upon his return from combat service in the Marine Corps, film scoring and music business marketing at University of California, Los Angeles. Mr. Beal’s conducting mentors were Academy Award-nominee and multiple Emmy Award-winning Ian Fraser and twelve-time Emmy nominee Nick Perito. His film scoring mentors were Academy Award-winning composers George Duning and Dominic Frontiere. His mentors for television scoring were Emmy Award-winning composers Billy Goldenberg, Earle Hagen and multiple Emmy nominee Ken Johnson.
Currently living on the California coast, Mr. Beal is married to Helene Nielsen Beal and enjoys the rocky coastline and attending live theatre and concerts in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

A.S.M.A.C. is an organization whose mission is to promote the arts of Music Arranging, Composition and Orchestration within the entertainment industry community and the general public.